#pitfury

[nerdslikeme]

EVENT KLAXON: Ask an Editor - How to Get Published

Orion Books, UK Publisher of the year in 2021 at the British Book Awards, is running a FREE EVENT next Wednesday, 29th June 2022. Three editors across different areas of the business - SFF, commercial and literary fiction, and non-fiction - will be giving some insight into their roles, what they look for in a submission, and answering audience questions.

Link to follow in the post below!

[nedhugar]

More Gambit jam art - after the first jam they gave us an extra day to draw more stuff. I was still thinking about the rushed Seraphs from the previous day (and we had some feedback about how the ascendant team functioned) so I drew these. I thought their mortal counterparts could be like the Fraggle Rock Doozers, just these little things that take themselves really seriously but no one else does. The mortals that die become martyr seraphs that carry their wounds into death. I was raised Catholic and I love all the brutal martyred saint imagery and bejeweled skeletons and catacombs, but all this was definitely too referential to make it in the game. I like the decapitated angel the best, but I think I wasted too much time trying to come up with “cool” looking angels. In the end I liked the energy and narrative of the original seraphs more.

Pitfury Pumpers- this was a redo of the Softball Furies. A fantasy Calvinball sports league. I wanted the Pitfury Pumpers to still be very classic Blizard style fantasy orc army, but dressed in turn-of-the-century sports gear.

I wanted to really emphasize on why each team is faction is motivated to fight.  In this round of design I made everyone fighting over mana crystals, because its the most important resource in the game. (I think I tried re-framing the Party Barge from the previous day as needing mana crystals to either power their smoke machines or use as ice in their drinks.)

Living Kingdom - a warrior army from a dimension that is inside a giant living creature. I thought this would be a cooler “people living in perfect harmony with their natural environment” than say, tree people. The body is a really great reference because you can make designs that are incredibly alien, but their function is still very apparent. I think really good designs are always a mix between the familiar and the unfamiliar, familiar enough that its approachable but unfamiliar enough that its exciting and unexpected.  I wanted to see if I could push a body theme but keep it from being gross and unpleasant. Some of my inspiration was M.T. Anderson's Empire of Gut and Bone, and how he characterizes the inside of a giant body like a living landscape with swampy bile ducts, glowing nerves and vein tributaries. Also Breath of the Wild just came out and I was really thinking about Jomon period pottery.

Time Police - A time-traveling narcotics force that is busting everyone for using mana. Thinking of the science patrol from Ultraman + Power Rangers SPD + McGruff. Cartoonishly optimistic police mascots with a lot of cyberpunk pessimism right under the surface. I thought they’d use “time travel” to switch lanes and apprehend suspects, use time lasers to de-evolve opponents into lizards or whatever. I’ll post some actual stuff that made it into Gambit next! Stay tuned. Please check out Gambit https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigfishgames.gambitgoog